Bab 34: When Chaotic Individuals Gather, Chaos Ensues (2)
(Third Person's POV)
While Maple is extremely alarmed because of this dragon's appearance, Snowflake and Queen is the exact opposite. In fact, they're beaming as they got ready to face this huge and disgusting looking dragon.
Whatever they were feeling didn't seem to matter much to this giant being though. It simply opened its three mouths and unleashed a torrent of toxic liquid at her.
To protect the two behind her, Maple raised her shield to block it. However, the poison-breath attack proved to be more powerful than she expected, enveloping her in an instant.
The two rearguards seems to have foreseen this happening as they backed away from Maple's position immediately. It was Snowflake who commanded Queen to change her positioning.
With Snowflake's experience, she knows some of the attacking patterns of this boss after researching the forums by herself when she's free. She's a big chuuni but she's also quite experienced in gaming.
With her guide and support, Queen didn't have much problem just casually chucking fireballs at the Hydra. Because of her skills, she could literally do this all day, do some serious damage, and still have a lot of mana to spare.
Her skill, [Nature's Beloved], allows her to have twice her INT while simultaneously having the same amount of stat points assigned to her MP. This was taken a step further when she received her skill, [Beloved Child of Mana] and [Destruction Mage].
[Beloved Child of Mana] increases her MP by 50 stat points and her INT by 1.5 times while [Destruction Mage] grants her piercing magic damage. 50% of her magic attacks are converted into piercing magic damage. In her current level, lvl 17, and with 115 stat points allocated in her INT, she have a whopping total of 345 stat points in both her MP and INT.
Her total MP, adding her initial allocated points should add up to atleast 4,162, a number that shouldn't be seen from a beginner such as her. In fact, half of the credit for their party's fast leveling speed goes to this glass cannon named Queen.
Even with the Hydra's supposedly high defense, she broke through it like it's a mere paper. Thus, it is pretty evident that, because of this very attacking power, the aggro of the Hydra changed into her extremely fast.
"Ah!? You dare to target this Great Archdemon, even though you're a mere rotten excuse of a dragon!? Take this and this! And this!"
"RoooARr!"
When the Hydra slightly backed away because of her overwhelming damage, Queen got cocky and taunted the Hydra even more.
"A-Hahaha! See? You're such a poor excuse of a dragon! You don't even have scales to protect your weak and rotting body. How absolutely disgusting…"
Meanwhile, while Queen is battling with the Hydra and surviving barely because of Snowflake's timely heals and poison dispels, Maple just opened her eyes from the attack she received.
When she opened her eyes she saw poison dripping on the ground around her. Maple herself remained unharmed but her gear wasn't so lucky.
"M-my shield and sword…"
"Maple-san! Please use [Provoke] and take the aggro away from Queen-san! At this rate, just one hit from that will take out most of our DPS!"
"U-Un! Got it!—"Provoke"! Hey, you! Yes, you Mr. Dragon! Come and attack me instead of my friend!"
Snowflake couldn't help but facepalm when she heard how her friend tried to 'provoke' the Hydra. Well, it worked but… is there really a need to shout at it when all you needed to do was use the skill?
"Since you will be our shield for the most part of this battle, let me grant you the divine blessing coming from my [Tyrant's Eye]!"
With a shout, Snowflake activated one of the support skills that she accidentally received from a random old woman NPC who thought that she really is the chosen one.
Due to her showing off her heterochromatic eyes that has the color of blue and gold, changed through the game's character editing section of course, Snowflake got a skill unique to herself called [Divine Saintess' Eyes].
Turns out that the old woman she was boasting her eyes to is the current saintess who's about to die of old age. The plan of the devs was to have this saintess give a quest to a new player, which is nearly impossible to complete, but it was all bypassed by Snowflake's almost divine imagination, managing to convince the saintess herself that she is indeed the next in line to succeed her.
The effect of this skill is to double the effect of her support skills like buffs and heals. This is why she is able to sustain both herself and Queen at the same time without any of them dying.
Even though Maple just lost her shield which had provided +28 to her VIT, and thanks to the effects of Absolute Defense and Giant Killing, that number had been quadrupled—meaning she'd just lost 112 points of defense, the Hydra's damage didn't even deal that much damage.
Thanks to Snowflake's buff, she was safe from this Hydra's attacks.
However, this safe haven created for Queen didn't and couldn't last for long. After Maple's [Provoke] wore off, the Hydra once again directed its attacks at Queen.
Seeing this, Maple, as the Great Shielder of the party, wanted to help.
""Cover Mo—""
However, before she could help, she was stopped by Snowflake.
"Don't do that Maple! If you do that, you'll loose too much VIT. I don't have enough mana right now to help us all sustain. The DoT damage of the poison mist is already hard enough to deal with!"
Since they needed Queen to deal damage while they need Snowflake to sustain, the party was stuck between a rock and a hard place. However, at the very last second, Snowflake stood right in front of Queen and took all of the damage.
"Make sure to deal all of your damage before you die, Queen-san. I only have 5% of MP. I couldn't help as much as you even if I wanted to…"
"Snowflake-san!"
"Leave it to me! This Queen of all Hell shall burn this Hydra to cinders!"
Hearing such reassuring words, Snowflake gave Queen two thumbs up while smiling brightly.
✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽
With the loss of one of their party members, Maple and Queen became even more serious. Since she's about to die anyway, Queen chugged the potions she have one by one while casting [Fireball] and [Fire Lance] when it's off cool down.
"Take this you puny excuse of a dragon! A-Hahaha! You will burn to cinders with the Great Archdemon's flames from Hell!"
Seeing Snowflake and Queen sacrifice themselves just for this dungeon run to succeed, Maple was absolutely touched. Her brain worked in overdrive as she tried to find a way to deal damage.
"Okay…focus! Meditate!"
Maple calmed herself, closed her eyes, and concentrated.
This time, she'd have to do it while enduring the pain of being attacked. Meditation's effect would only be active for however long she remained focused.
She had the ring and the Meditation skill, as well as the potions she'd purchased. Maple's goal was to use all of these in conjunction in an attempt to raise her Poison Resist. That was her only shot at winning.
Queen is already a lost cause in her opinion as she couldn't do anything to save her so she wanted to try everything she can to finish off what they started.
While using Meditation, the pain and fear lessened. The sensations faded away, like her physical form was growing intangible.
This helped her persevere. Each time her HP fell below 20 percent, she drank a potion.
Over and over and over and over again.
Her healing couldn't keep pace with the sheer amount of damage. She would either run out of potions or gain the resistance she needed. The outcome rested solely on which came first.
After she steeped in poison for quite some time, a voice echoed in her mind.
「Your [Poison Resist (M)] skill has evolved to [Poison Resist (L)]」
At the same time, Queen lost all of her HP after chucking in another batch of fireballs.
"This Great Archdemon shall meet you on the other side, Maple!"
With that as her farewell, Queen also turned into digital particles, leaving Maple inside the dungeon, all by her lonesome.
"I will! Just wait until I deliver the rewards!"
Thankfully for Maple, her gamble paid off. She managed to sustain while receiving damage, leaving her with enough HP to drink her final potion.
"Ha-ha… I did it!"
Now, with full health, Maple is looking to end this fight. However, with no weapon or shield, she doesn't have anything that can help her deal damage.
A few seconds later, the voice in her mind had announced that she'd acquired [Poison Nullification]. Now the breath attacks almost felt pleasant.
But she couldn't just kick back and relax. As her HP recovered, Maple had to think of a way to deal damage.
Since she didn't want to betray the trust that her friends gave her, Maple went through a long process of trial and error. After hours of trying things out, she finally hit upon an utterly outlandish idea.
"The dragon flesh is all ragged and torn up… and since I can nullify poison, I bet I could eat it!"
Since she's already near the Hydra, Maple only had to place her palms together in prayer.
"…Bon appétit, I guess."
She took a bite of the dragon's back.
"Urgh… that's not very tasty," Maple said, making a face.
She experimented for a few moments and quickly confirmed that any flesh she swallowed would not regenerate. But if she merely tore some off with her teeth, those bits would eventually reappear—like a video rewinding. And of course, that did no damage.
"I guess I have to eat it…"
The poison dragon's flesh was slightly bitter. It reminded Maple of the green peppers she'd always detested.
But if she had to eat it to get out of the room, then she wasn't going to stop, even if it meant holding her nose and biting back tears.
The one thing that became a saving grace for Maple was the fact that this game had no mechanic that made her feel full. Players could taste things, but no matter how much they ate, they'd never be stuffed.
And thus, a weird sight of a girl munching on the oh so powerful boss Hydra was born.
"Munch, munch… Oh, Mr. Dragon! Thanks for breathing on me! Chew, chew. That adds a nice bit of spice. Kinda helps hide the green pepperiness."
Of course, the girl didn't forget to throw a few compliments at the helpless dragon while munching on its flesh. Such an outlandish sight indeed.
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※~To be continued~※
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Author's Remarks:
※ My longest chapter so far. Eh, I could probably cut it in half and post it as part 2 and 3 but I didn't want to make it too long winded. Also, most of the things that happened here took place in cannon so I don't want to bore the hell out of you guys by reiterating it.
※ If you've noticed, Maple's VIT is much higher than her previous counterpart by a hundred or so. I don't know why but it seems like the author forgot to assign the points or whatever to Maple or something? You get five stat points every level and 10 every time you hit a level with '0' so that's a total of 55 every ten levels. Maple's displayed stat in the novel lacks a whole lot of stat points.
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